Separatist detained under PSA, shifted to Jammu prison

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 19

The authorities in Kashmir have booked Zahoor Ahmad Bhat, the younger brother of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front leader Maqbool Bhat, under the Public Safety Act.

As per the detention orders passed by the District Magistrate, Srinagar, Bhat has been ordered to be lodged at the high-security Kot Bhalwal Jail in the Jammu province.

In April 2014, the J&K Police had booked Zahoor Bhat, who is also a senior JKLF leader, for murder and criminal conspiracy in the June 2013 Hyderpora attack on an Army convoy and was facing a trial in the case. It is not, however, known if fresh charges have been slapped against him as the PSA dossier has not been made public.

Sources said Zahoor Bhat, who originally hails from the Trehgam area of Kupwara district, was picked up by the Nowhatta police station on Saturday evening as he has been slapped with the PSA by the Srinagar District Magistrate.

“Since he lives in the Badamwari area of Srinagar at present, the police station concerned arrested him to execute the PSA detention orders,” a senior police officer said. He, however, did not give the exact date of his detention.

On March 29, 2014, Bhat was booked and detained under the PSA in the same case on the orders of the District Magistrate, Budgam. After the PSA detention order was quashed by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, he was later booked under the PSA on the orders of the District magistrate, Kupwara, in April 2015 and lodged at Baramulla Sub-Jail.

Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front founder Maqbool Bhat is considered the pioneer of militancy in Kashmir. He was executed in Tihar Jail in 1984 in a murder case and is buried there.